Question Undervolting my old AMD Phenom II 1090T...see NEXT thread instead

[Overthere]

I deleted the contents of this first post because I've learned some things by experimenting with undervolting via my Gigabyte motherboard's Award BIOS c.2012.

I'll start another thread in the Hardware \ CPUs Forum describing my results so far, and will ask better, more specific questions based on new, limited understanding of how undervolting works.

Thanks

 

[Eximo]

Not sure what you would monitor exactly. Temperature certainly won't be a problem.

As to a guide, every CPU is a little different. You must experiment by reducing CPU related voltages, changing one at a time. Generally people focus on the CPU core voltage, since that is the bulk of the power used.

You have to pick out some fixed task you want the CPU to be able to do while undervolted to use as a baseline. Like a Cinebench run or something.

As you lower the CPU core voltage the CPU will use less power and become more unstable, when it does, you raise the voltage back up to the last point it worked under all the conditions you want to test. Be that gaming, or what have you. Then you run that for a while doing your normal everyday stuff to see if it will crash. If it does, you add another notch of voltage and try again.

The best way to gain efficiency at this point would be to upgrade to something more recent. Intel i3-12100 or Ryzen 5 5500 I believe are the top two budget CPUs with the best performance per watt. I think the Ryzen 5 7600 actually wins, but it is nearly triple the cost after memory and motherboard. (5600X3D might also be in the running, but it is a microcenter exclusive)